What No One Else Had Seen
by Cookie VanDeKamp
Summary: Nine year old Harleen Quinzel finds something she knows she wasn't supposed to see, and just has to tell someone. Sixteen year old Jonathan Crane, with some hesitation, accompanies her into the woods that night. (Jonathan/Harley friendship, with some implied one-sided crushing from Harley's end. One-sided because she's nine, people.) Oneshot.


She wasn't supposed to be outside after dark, but what was life without a little rule-breaking here and there? If she had been a good little girl and just stayed in bed like she was supposed to, she never would've found what she had found. Red hoodie over a white t-shirt and pink pajama pants, the nine year old girl stumbled, barefoot, up the dirt roads of the small Louisiana town. She had found something she was sure she wasn't supposed to have seen, and she just had to share it with someone else.

Harleen Quinzel had moved from Brooklyn in New York to this small town in rural Louisiana a few months earlier with her family, and she was still getting used to how quiet it was at night. If she held her breath, she heard nothing at all except for the buzzing of mosquitos and the occasional frog. No cars, no shouting, no dogs, no night clubs, nothing. She'd taken to sneaking out for a couple hours every night after she was sure her parents were in bed to take a walk, enjoying the time to herself. It was about midnight, and she hadn't seen another living person outside since seven. It was if the town itself had gone to sleep, not just the people in it.

It was early August, only days before she'd start at her new school, and she was looking forward to seeing other kids again. The towns here were so few and far-between, the school would have kids from no less than eight small towns much like this one. So far, she'd only met one other person under the age of eighteen—in fact, he was who she was looking for now.

She approached the small house at the end of the street, next to a large and vast cornfield. Her only company was an old, ugly scarecrow with a burlap head and a sewn-on grin. Harley grinned back at it, and then scampered over to the old wooden gate. There was a gap just big enough for a small girl to squeeze through, and so, ignoring the fact that she'd have to explain away the dirt on her pajamas later, she did. The dog was asleep, which was lucky. The last time she'd come here, it had not only barked loudly enough to alert the neighbors, it had tried to bite her, as it always did whenever she came within twelve feet of the place. The only way to appease it was to give it something to chew on. It preferred Harley's sneakers, but she knew she couldn't do that forever—she was beginning to run out of shoes.

Crawling on her hands and knees, Harley found the small window that faced the back alley. Thank goodness the house was all on one level. She rose to her feet, and, standing on tip-toe, tapped on the glass window.

"Jonathan!" she whispered eagerly. "Jonathan!"

A few moments passed, and then, the black curtain to the room moved, and a tall, skinny boy appeared at the window, sleepily putting glasses on. He rubbed one of his blue eyes, then opened them, looking to see the source of the noise.

Harley bounced up and down on her toes. "Hi! I'm so glad you heard! I thought I'd have to come inside, and I didn't wanna risk waking up your Grandma, but I gotta show you something!"

Jonathan blinked. "…Harleen, isn't it?" he asked, looking incredibly confused.

Harley sighed in frustration. Thanks to his grandmother, they didn't get to talk much, but how could've he possibly forgotten her already? She waved at him every time she saw him, after all.

"Yes, it's _Harley_!" she corrected. She grabbed the windowsill and pulled herself up, so she was clinging to the window, her bare feet dangling a foot or so off the ground. "Can you come outside?"

"Harleen, it's the middle of the night," he said, as if she didn't know that. "I can't just—"

"Come on, it's not like you have school tomorrow!"

Harley had been determined to befriend Jonathan Crane from the moment she found out he was the only other child in their town. They'd have other kids closer to their own ages at school, sure, but on the weekends and during vacations, they'd only have one another. She saw no reason why they should let the age gap—seven years—stop them from being friends.

Jonathan still looked like he had misgivings.

"It's really cool, I promise!" she whispered. "You'll—you'll hear about it tomorrow, probably, unless someone hides it first—I don't think I'm supposed to know about it! I think it's a _secret_."

"Secret." That word was a dangerous one, and an enticing one at the same time. "Secret" meant they would be the only two people who knew in the entire town, at least for a little while. "Secret" meant it would be something they'd share, and never speak about in front of anyone. "Secret" meant they'd have a little thing to themselves, away from the eyes of the town, his grandmother, her parents, or the bullies at school he knew he'd be facing, and sincerely hoped for her sake that she would not.

Jonathan glanced over his shoulder, then said, "Wait out front, by the scarecrow. I'm too big to slip out this way."

Harley nodded, grinning so widely he could see every one of her brace-covered teeth. "Okay!" she whispered excitedly. She dropped to the ground and scurried back around.

Jonathan quickly slid a few extra pillows underneath his blanket to make it look like someone was still in there, and closed the window. He turned on his ceiling fan, so if Granny woke up she wouldn't notice she couldn't hear him breathing, then grabbed his jacket off the desk chair and pushed the door open as quietly as possibly. He paused, listening for Granny's even, steady breathing to confirm she was still asleep, and then begged his footsteps to remain light and soundless as he crept down the hall, avoiding the planks he knew creaked. Grabbing a few stale biscuits he'd use to appease the dog if need be, he slid out the backdoor, being sure to not open it far enough to ring the bell Granny had attached. It was lucky, he supposed, that he was so skinny, because he was able to turn sideways and slip out without ringing the bell.

August was turning to September fast, and while the days were blazing hot as ever, the nights were chilly and cold, enough for Jonathan to get goosebumps and pull his jacket tighter around him. Although he'd miss the warmth, it was October Jonathan was really looking forward to. Halloween was his favorite holiday, even if Granny never let him celebrate. At least he could enjoy the costumes the other high schoolers would be wearing at school that day.

Moving around the side of the house and past the dog without a hitch, Jonathan soon found himself at the edge of the cornfield, where Harley sat on the muddy ground, waiting patiently. She grinned again and hopped to her feet.

"Ready?" she said, voice barely above a whisper despite them being alone. He nodded, and the girl grabbed the older boy's hand, dragging him along behind her down the dirt road.

"Aren't you worried your parents will catch you?" Jonathan asked.

She shook her head, blonde pigtails whipping back and forth as she did so. "I do this a lot. Dad is a heavy sleeper. Mama—I'm not sure. I guess I'm just lucky she hasn't caught me. But isn't it cool? Being the only one out here? I've never seen another person awake around here at this time of night."

"It is peaceful," he admitted, following her as she led him towards the edge of town, where the woods began. "You sure we should be in there?"

"It's fine!" she assured him with a laugh. "Why, you afraid of the dark, Jonathan?"

"No," he said truthfully. The only thing he truly feared was his grandmother. And, as long hours of reading when Granny locked him in his room without supper had taught him, it wasn't really the dark itself people feared. It was the unknown. Everyone had been in those woods in daylight, so everyone knew they were harmless. No wolves, no bears, no tigers, no lions, not even any homeless people. And now that his eyes were adjusting, he could see reasonably well in the darkness. There was simply no logical reason to be afraid.

"Well, come on, then!"

They stepped through the first few bushes and branches of the woods, and found themselves in an even greater darkness than before. Twigs snapping underneath their feet, Harley and Jonathan stepped over the uneven ground, towards whatever magnificent thing Harley had found.

On the forest floor, Jonathan saw something, glinting in what little moonlight could make its way through the trees. He knelt down, and touched it with one finger.

"Blood," he whispered. He looked up at the nine-year-old. "Harleen, did you—"

"It was there when I got here," she whispered, excitement shining even in the darkness. "I thought it might be a hurt animal or something so I followed it—and—and it wasn't an animal, Jonathan!"

"It was…"

"…a person."

Jonathan's breath had hitched in his throat, but he wasn't afraid. No, on the contrary, he was intrigued. No one ever died this way in this town. Bloody, violent deaths happened in big cities like New York or Gotham or Chicago. What had happened here?

"Who was it?" he whispered, looking Harley intently in the eyes, blue meeting blue.

"I think it was Officer Montoya," she whispered back. "Come on. If they haven't moved it, I can show you…"

They stepped over a few more bushes, and came to a ditch with a small stream running through it. Creeping to the edge, the two stared down at the body lying in it, blood pouring down its face and into the water.

It _was_ Montoya, and she was dead. Hair caked with blood, dirt, and sweat, three bullets were lodged into her chest, and another was in her leg. Brown eyes wide open, she stared up at the starless sky, her blood entirely soaking her front. A look of panic was on her face, and her gun lay a few feet away.

"Who did this to her?" Jonathan breathed, not taking his eyes off the corpse.

"I don't know. I didn't even hear her get shot," Harley replied. She was sitting on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest. "I was walkin' through here and I saw the blood and… here she was."

Jonathan sat down next to her.

"She was scared of dying," Harley observed, pointing at the dead cop's face. "Lookit how scared she looks."

Jonathan nodded, but said, "She was probably more scared of whatever happens after dying, really. It all comes back to fearing what we don't know. Most things do."

Harley tilted her head to look at the sixteen-year-old. "You know a lot about it?"

"I read," he said simply. "I think I may study it when I go to college."

"Dying?"

"No. Fear."

"I want to be a doctor," Harley announced.

"So you can stop this kind of thing from happening?"

"No," she said, "not that kinda doctor. The kind that study people's brains. Psy-coly-jists."

"Psychologists," Jonathan said with the correct pronunciation.

"Yeah. Those. I wanna be one of those."

"Me too," he said, smiling a bit, surprised at the common ground with the soon-to-be fifth grader.

"Maybe we can work at the same office someday," Harley said happily. It was if they had both forgotten a corpse was less than ten feet away from them.

"I want a lab," Jonathan said, "so I can study fear all the time. Check out chemical reactions in the brain and whatnot."

"I want to work at one of those hospitals you see on TV."

"You see mental hospitals on TV? Aren't you a bit young for that?"

"My folks just got cable. It's not _that_ hard to figure out a parental block code."

He let out a breathy chuckle at that.

There were a few minutes of quiet, before Harley said in a small voice, "D'you think we should tell anyone we found her?"

Jonathan paused to think. "…Did you touch her or her gun at all?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Then we don't tell anyone," he decided. "We don't wanna get mixed up in this if we can avoid it, Harley. No one ever needs to know we were here."

"No one ever needs to know," she repeated.

"In situations like these, only tell the truth when absolutely necessary, Harley," Jonathan advised the younger girl. It was advice that had helped him navigate life with his grandmother.

Harley nodded. "Makes sense."

"We should go, Harley."

"…Okay."

Neither of them moved. They just sat in silence for a bit longer, both of them staring at the bloody corpse. Jonathan knew he should've been horrified, but he was merely interested—medically and scientifically, of course. He glanced at Harley. She didn't appear to be terribly disturbed either, which in and of itself was a bit disturbing. She was only nine, after all.

Finally, Harley broke the silence.

"Are you scared?" she whispered.

He paused, then whispered back: "No."


End file.
